Mapping a critical framework for the

International Journal of Cultural Studies http://ics.sagepub.com

Mapping a critical framework for the study of travel journalism Elfriede F端rsich and Anandam P. Kavoori International Journal of Cultural Studies 2001; 4; 149 DOI: 10.1177/136787790100400202 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ics.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/2/149

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ARTICLE

INTERNATIONAL journal of CULTURAL studies Copyright © 2001 SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi Volume 4(2): 149–171 [1367-8779(200106)4:2; 149–171; 017216]

Mapping a critical framework for the study of travel journalism ●

Elfriede Fürsich Boston College

●

Anandam P. Kavoori University of Georgia

● This article provides a programmatic framework for the investigation of travel journalism. We argue that travel journalism is an important site for studying the ideological dimensions of tourism, transcultural encounters and the ongoing dynamics of media globalization. Based on the literature on tourism in sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, we identify three distinct but interrelated theoretical perspectives for the analysis of travel journalism structured by issues of periodization, power and phenomenology. ●

ABSTRACT

● cultural imperialism ● cultural studies ● globalization ● modernity ● nationalism ● postmodernity ● tourism ● travel

KEYWORDS

mass media journalism

●

Introduction Most traditional international mass communication research examines news journalism such as the work of wire agencies, foreign correspondents or television news crews. One field of journalism that equally constructs representations of others, but has been mostly ignored, is that of travel

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journalism. In this article, we ask for increased attention of communication scholars to this genre. We argue that travel journalism is an important site for studying the ideological dimensions of tourism and transcultural encounters, as well as the ongoing dynamics of media globalization. We first analyze why tourism and travel journalism has remained under-explored as a field of study. Then, based on the literature on travel and tourism in sociology, anthropology and cultural studies we identify three distinct but interrelated perspectives that provide a theoretical and programmatic framework for studying travel journalism. These three perspectives are discussed as ‘Issues of Periodization’, ‘Power and Identity’ and finally ‘Experience and Phenomenology’.

In the current hypercommercialized, technology-driven and entertainment-saturated postmodern media landscape when many scholars lament the ‘end of journalism’ (for example, Hardt, 1998), it seems inadvisable to rely on the term journalism for our framework. We agree that public communication is in transition and that journalism has increasingly become ‘part of an entertainment package that transnational corporations sell to audiences across the globe’ (Chalaby, 2000: 32). Nevertheless, we consider it an important category for defining our area of analysis. We understand journalism in Hartley’s sense as a ‘textual system’. As he explains: The most important textual feature of journalism is the fact that it counts as true. The most important component of its system is the creation of readers as publics, and the connection of these readerships to other systems, such as those of politics, economics, and social control. (Hartley, 1996: 35; emphasis in original)

Thus, what we consider for analysis is an often-privileged position in public discourse. Yet, we neither identify journalism exclusively by the medium or technology used (print, broadcasting or internet), nor by its professional intention (inform or entertain), nor by a job description (travel journalist, producer or content provider).1

Why is it important to investigate tourism and travel journalism?

A number of reasons support the argument for a closer scholarly engagement with travel journalism.

(1) Boom of the tourism industry Tourism is considered one of the world’s largest industries (for example, Weir-Alderson, 1988), generating more revenue than, for example, either the electronic or automotive industries. According to the UN-affiliated

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World Tourism Organization (WTO), ‘over the past 40 years, it has expanded an average of 7% a year in arrivals and 12% a year in receipts [that is, net proceeds] – a growth record unmatched by any other economic sector’ (Herbote and Goldberg, 1995: xiii). Whereas most traveling still takes place within the borders of the home nation, for an increasing number of people international travel is no longer exceptional. The statistics on international arrivals and receipts mirror that development. In 1956, when the WTO started publishing statistics, worldwide international arrivals were estimated to be 50 million, with international tourism receipts of about $4bn. Within 40 years, in 1996, arrivals had increased to 594 million with receipts of $423bn (excluding airfares). Overall, in 1996, financial output related to travel and tourism contributed 10.7 percent to the global gross domestic product (Waters, 1997). An article in the New York Times summarizes the international tourist boom: ‘Nothing is fueling the world economy quite like its inhabitants’ wanderlust. Within the next decade, the global tourism industry is expected to triple in size, to almost two billion travelers spending $1.83 trillion a year, or $5 billion a day’ (McDowell, 1998: C1; emphasis in original).

Whereas the United States and some European countries are still the top earners in the tourist business, overall, industrialized countries are losing market share to developing countries and Central/Eastern Europe. The strongest future growth rate is expected to occur in Asia and Latin America.

The WTO estimates that tourism and related industries employ about 262 million people; this equals 10.5 percent of the worldwide employment (Waters, 1997).

Countries rely to a different degree on tourism as a major employer and source of gross national product. Many developing countries are hoping to make tourism one of the main sectors of their economy. Western countries such as Austria depend on tourism as one of the main revenue sources of their country’s economy. Even the United States (as the overall largest generator of tourism and travel revenue from domestic and international tourism) directly or indirectly generates ‘10.5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), 11.4% of employment, 10.7 % of capital investment and 9.9 % of tax collections’ from the travel and tourism industry (Waters, 1997: 12).

Overall, increasing industrialization in western countries and the serviceoriented information age have steadily decreased the average weekly and annual working hours during the past 30 years. This has led to the development of leisure societies where tourism is no longer an activity of elites (for example, Urry, 1990). Moreover, tourism is no longer practiced only in the western industrialized nations or from ‘the West to the rest’. The end of the Cold War has changed the restrictions on travel in many former communist countries and has added a whole new patronage of travelers. Also, the economic success of many ‘periphery’ states has enlarged the upper middle class in these countries, resulting in more people who value the experiences of

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foreign travel and who have the extra money to spend on travel (for example, Korean tourists in Australia, Argentinians in the United States and recently more and more Chinese in Thailand). In sum, the changing global political and economic situation has brought new constituencies to an already booming travel industry.

(2) Tourism and its impact remain under-studied Most research on tourism is based in the industry perspective and the focus has been on generating economic information for the formulation of corporate or government tactics. Similarly, communication research on tourism has been primarily limited to evaluation of promotional strategies. Located in the fields of marketing and advertising/public relations, these studies are aimed at maximizing financial returns by handling the various publics in an effective way. A number of studies have used the notions of tourist demand, marketing, forecasting, planning and development in their research (Martin and Witt, 1988). Most of these studies see tourism primarily as an economic fact, characterized by its effects on the financial balance, and ignore its social and cultural role in contemporary society.

(3) Leisure as a significant social practice Tourism and travel writing are often seen as a frivolous topic, not worthy of serious research. In general, tourism is considered ‘a recreational activity devoid of social and political meaning’ (Chang and Holt, 1991: 102) because it seems to involve the private sphere and thus to lack public relevance. Until recently most scholars shared this attitude. Anthropologists, for example, buried their data on tourism in field notes and only occasionally published peripheral articles, as if tourism were not a scientific subject (Smith, 1989: 1). For many fieldworkers, tourists did not fit their framework, ‘like weeds in the garden plot, tourists spoil the character of the researcher’s carefully cultivated community’ (Pearce, 1982: 1).

Literature produced by travelers was considered limited – in the words of Lévi-Strauss, little more than ‘the exact number of packing cases required and misdemeanors of the ship’s dog’ (1970: 16). Even if anthropologists had been aware of the impact of tourism on indigenous societies, argues Nuñez (1989: 27), they would have ‘refrained from publishing their observations in systematic form because the study of tourism was somehow not considered “proper” or within the traditional purview of the discipline’.

Similarly, a ‘political scientist with a scholarly interest in tourism might be looked upon as dabbling in frivolity not as a serious scholar but an opportunist looking for a tax-deductible holiday’ (quoted in Hall, 1994: 5).

This lack of critical attention to tourism and travel journalism may lie in

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deeply embedded values in western society about play and work. Protestant ethics have emphasized the value of hard work – effectively devaluing play and leisure as cultural pursuits not worthy of serious theoretical engagement. However, we suggest that it is precisely the significance of leisure in contemporary society that makes the study of tourism and of travel journalism so crucial.

(4) Travel journalism as an important site for international communication research Paralleling the growth of tourism as a global industry has been the exponential growth of travel journalism. In addition to the traditional travel section in most major national and regional dailies, a large number of general travel magazines are published, along with a prodigious number of specialized travel publications dealing with interests as diverse as rock climbing or cruise vacations. The broadcast media offer specialized travel programs, celebrity travel shows and in various countries entire cable channels (for example, in the United States and the United Kingdom the ‘Travel Channel’ owned by Discovery Communications, or in France the ‘Voyage’ channel) devoted to the subject. The internet is another highly successful outlet for travel-related information. Already in 1997, it was estimated that travel accounts for one-third of on-line transaction revenue (PR Newswire, 1997). Travel sites of on-line services and travel-related web pages are among the most accessed websites on the internet.

The growing international tourism industry affects the media industry in two ways. First, international travel is no longer mostly a one-way stream from the West to other countries. Affluent groups from an increasing number of countries are travelling for pleasure or business. This makes international person-to-person contact more likely and generates audience interest for travel-related journalism and information as a global media topic.

Potential travelers will be interested in this kind of journalism for advice and entertainment. Moreover, a growing global ‘middle class’ will understand travel, especially international travel, as a desirable private goal of establishment while using mass-mediated travel as an ersatz experience as long as they cannot afford actual trips. Second, the growing tourist industry will generate an increasing market for travel advertising and public relations looking especially for media outlets that promise a targeted and receptive audience. These two trends are very likely to stimulate a bigger market for specialized travel journalism on a global scale.

Clearly, the increased prominence of travel journalism has relevance for scholars of international communication. This is especially evident when we consider how travel journalism functions much like international news to provide both information and cultural frames for ‘others’. But so far, international communication research has focused on the spread of news,

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entertainment or advertising in a global market (for example, Reeves, 1993); when looking at the way national media represent foreigners and foreign cultures, studies usually analyze international news content in newspapers or on television. However, audience interest in ‘hard’ international news is waning while media representations of ‘others’ remain decisive factors in this era of globalization. Therefore, a research agenda of international communication studies should refocus by evaluating other media genres. Examining travel journalism is an important strategy for analyzing the ongoing dynamics of media globalization.

(5) The special contingencies of travel journalism Travel journalism needs to be closely evaluated for its tacit allegiance to both advertising and the travel industry. In fact, travel journalism is a highly charged discourse beleaguered by the public relations efforts of the private travel industry and by government-sponsored tourism departments. In addition to the public relations saturation, travel journalism exists in symbiotic relationship with advertising. Travel is mostly covered in special sections of newspapers, in magazines or on television shows, which almost exclusively find their advertisers in the travel industry itself. Moreover, free trips and other inducements for travel journalists are common – only a few publishers are willing to finance the trips of the journalists. This places many travel journalists in a difficult position between major interest groups. A travel writer, for example, commented – after confessing to the fine line between gifting and bribes – that ‘the fact remains that most travel writing simply dishonors our free press’ (Weir-Alderson, 1988: 28).

Considering all of the factors delineated above, we argue that instead of examining travel journalism as trivial cultural celebration we need to ask in the context of international communication research what discourse is created in media representations of travel? What are the cultural and ideological assumptions on which such constructs are based?

A framework for the study of travel journalism Following cultural studies (and the emerging sub-field of transnational cultural studies), we want to establish a research agenda for the study of travel journalism broadly rather than narrowly. To that end, we suggest examining issues of encoding (here we include both studies of journalistic work routines and media practices and the textual analysis of travel journalism) and those of decoding or reception.

Based on the literature on tourism in the fields of sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, we have identified three different perspectives that can inform the study of travel journalism. The first approach deals with the issue

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of periodization; the second with issues of power and identity; and the last with issues of experience and phenomenology. Under each of these headings we first map the various conceptual issues that might frame our understanding of tourism and travel journalism and then identify research questions that studies of travel journalism might address. The research questions in each case deal with aspects of both encoding and decoding.

Issues of periodization

Modernity Several studies have tried to locate tourism within the historical development of western societies. Cohen (1972) suggests that the coining of the terms ‘tourist’ and ‘tourism’ corresponds to a novel category of traveler, separate from historically known travelers such as warriors, crusaders or pilgrims. Historically, the word ‘tourist’ is linked to the travel of English gentlemen on a tour as part of their education and entertainment. Etymologically, the word ‘tourist’ first appears in English, with the Oxford English Dictionary dating the word ‘tourist’ from 1800 and the word ‘tourism’ from 1811. It appears in the French Robert dictionary (as ‘touriste’) in 1816, and ‘tourisme’ appears in 1841, both derived from English.

Although it is relatively easy to track the word’s etymology, it is more difficult to identify the cultural frameworks that have made tourism the enormous sociological fact that it is. For some people, the answer lies in the emergence of tourism as an offshoot of modernity. Four issues peculiar to modernity can be seen as underlying the growth of tourism: first, the creation of work and leisure as separate spheres of social activity; second, the importance of issues of authenticity; third, the division of the social environment into discrete units of experience; and fourth, the impact of technology on everyday life.

Urry argues that tourism’s location within hours of leisure time (rather than labor) makes it a truly modern enterprise: Tourism is a leisure activity which presupposes its opposite, namely regulated and organized work. It is one manifestation of how work and leisure are organized as separate and regulated spheres of social practice in ‘modern’ societies. Indeed acting as a tourist is one of the defining characteristics of being ‘modern’ and is bound up with major transformations in paid work.

(Urry, 1990: 2–3; emphasis added)

Modernity is also characterized by transformed cultural dynamics, as rural communities – with their strong association with traditional sources of cultural coherence (for example, religion and patriarchy) – were replaced

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by large urban centers characterized by a search for alternate sources of cultural coherence. At the heart of this search was the desire for authenticity.

As MacCannell explains: For moderns, reality and authenticity are thought to be elsewhere: in other historical periods and other cultures, in purer, simpler lifestyles. . . . [T]he concern of moderns for ‘naturalness,’ their nostalgia and their search for authenticity are not merely casual and somewhat decadent, though harmless, attachments to the souvenirs of destroyed cultures and dead epochs. They are also components of the conquering spirit of modernity – the grounds of its unifying consciousness. (1976: 3)

MacCannell sees the artificial preservation, reconstruction or the museumization of traditional sociocultural forms (for example, the ‘primitive’ or the ‘exotic’) as the ultimate sign that modernity has succeeded. Tourism becomes the ‘spirit’ of modernity. Moreover, the cultural logic of modernism is tied into the development of industrial rationalism and a collective bureaucratic vision that divides the social environment into discrete units of experience. While traditional communities had little sense of rigid boundaries between different spheres of life, the modernist isolates and transcribes discrete spheres of influence and control. This makes it possible to isolate ‘nature’ from ‘culture’, the ‘environment’ from ‘history’, or ‘body’ from ‘mind’.

Finally, any modernist approach to analyzing travel cannot overlook how modern technology, travel and tourism are intrinsically linked. The tourist gaze is often mediated through a camera (first photography and later video), as Urry explains. In its extreme, ‘travel is a strategy for the accumulation of photographs’ (1990: 139). This photogenic logic structures tourist locations (vistas) and social experience. Professional travel photography and television travel shows can be theorized as an extension of this motivation. Similarly, advancements in modern transportation technology initiated modern mass tourism. Prato and Trivero elucidate how the cultural history of the car, the train and the plane has structured the ideological aspects of travel and tourism, up to a point when motion and transport ‘ceases to function as a metaphor of progress or at least of “modern” life, and becomes instead the primary activity of existence’ (1985: 40).

Each of these issues resonates with scholarly interest in travel journalism.

At the level of production and textualization, it would be useful to ask questions about the exact conjuncture of the development of travel journalism with the rise of modernity. In the West, this would entail an examination of the early development of travel journalism from perhaps older narrative forms such as the colonial travelogue and the diaries of adventurers. The history of the newspaper is tied into the development of modern industry and the notion of work itself. Concomitantly, it would be interesting to see the development of notions of leisure and recreation in early newspapers.

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Because colonial narratives usually endorse travel as an educational activity, one should analyze how the modernist notion of leisure as an activity in and for itself develops in relation to its colonial origins.

The issue of authenticity is one that lends itself well to the study of both the historical and contemporary texts of travel journalism. What are the constructs of authenticity that travel journalism has predominantly used in the past and now? Why are some topics (such as nature, ethnicity and religion) used more than others? What are the specific institutional forces that foster and develop these modes of authenticity in travel journalism (for example, national and state governments, environmentalist groups, park authorities, religious groups and so on)? In what ways have the workings of these institutions helped to perpetuate the structuring of social experience (and consequently tourism)? At the level of reception, one can ask to what extent have travelers internalized the structuration of touristic experience along the lines of the structuration of social experience? What are the modes of authenticity that travelers (as subjects of modernity) most subscribe to?

How does the reading of travel journalism help to relate to those constructs of authenticity? What textual strategies work best to further issues of authenticity and leisure? How does actual travel reflect the experience of authenticity? Is there a tension between the textualization of authenticity and the actual experience?

Postmodernism While the literature on postmodernism connects with tourism in a number of ways, one issue has direct relevance for scholars of tourism and travel journalism: the hybridity of cultural forms in postmodernity. Leong, for example, argues: Tourist culture in effect is a showcase of postmodernism: a concoction of something ‘native,’ something borrowed, something old and something new. . . . In such a melange, authenticity is somewhat eclipsed by estrangement: dance and other rituals, organized for tourist consumption, become performances rather than integral parts of the social life of participants. They are something to be watched by others rather than something to be lived by themselves. (1989: 371)

Urry calls the ‘tourist gaze’ a symbol of postmodernity. Like Leong, he sees typical aspects of postmodernism (pastiche, kitsch, the hyper-real, copies without original, dissolution of boundaries) represented in tourism. For him, ‘being a tourist’ is the typical stage of postmodernity: [T]he era of mass communication has transformed the tourist gaze and many of the features of postmodernism have already been partly prefigured in existing tourist practices. What I have termed the tourist gaze is increasingly bound

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up with and is partly indistinguishable from all sorts of other social and cultural practices. This has the effects, as ‘tourism’ per se declines in specificity, of universalizing the tourist gaze – people are much of the time ‘tourists’ whether they like it or not. The tourist gaze is intrinsically part of contemporary experience, of postmodernism. (1990: 82)

Analyzed from the prism of postmodernity, several research questions emerge. Is travel journalism a modernist text that reinforces rather than blurs traditional forms of authenticity or do postmodern travel texts blur the boundaries? Textual analyses can examine the different subjectivities portrayed in the range of tourist periodicals, newsletters, television shows and internet sites. What authority does travel journalism provide in postmodern societies? At the level of reception, researchers can ask what is the role of mass tourist periodicals in a postmodern age that encourages the development of differentiated and hybrid identity forms? How do different populations based on age, ethnicity, gender and locality deal with postmodern travel texts? What is the range of specific cultural (and subcultural) mediations of these already fragmented texts?

Nationalism Modernity is inextricably linked to nationalism and the formation of the nation-state (Giddens, 1990). To become ‘modern’ is often seen as a goal by emergent nation-states. In this context, tourism is often seen as fulfilling the goals of economic development of the nation-state – that is, modernizing it (De Kadt, 1979). However, tourism has more than just an economic function. In many cases, tourism’s function is symbolic, working to create a map of the nation for both internal and external consumption. In the United Kingdom, for example, the tourist industry ‘sells’ royalty and Britain’s imperial legacy as prime tourist attractions along with the ‘pristine’ English countryside with its village inns and cricket greens. Such tours construct an image of England and the English that essentializes a certain narrowly prescribed notion of nationhood based on a particular ethnicity (white, male and upper class). As Stuart Hall (1989) points out, such a discursive rendering of culture is implicitly ideological and has been less reflective of England’s multiculturalism than it is of the cultural ideology of Thatcherite conservatism.

Tourism works in similar ways in other parts of the world. Leong (1989) shows how states, in his case Singapore, manufacture traditions for tourism by choosing certain areas of the past in the process of nation building.

National tourism becomes a site where unified national symbols are constructed, even if this involves the cultural ‘cleansing’ of cultural practices that are thought of as non-attractive to tourists. Instead of presenting existing exotic lifestyles, Singapore creates a new ‘exotic’ that – combined with

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western amenities and facilities – becomes the travel package ‘Instant Asia’: ‘Since most visitors stay no more than three days in Singapore, marketers of cultural meanings try to show and sell those messages quickly in a condensed form’ (1989: 366).

Yet, as the tourist industry (public or private) generates ‘national traditions’ and constantly refers to past nostalgic sites, the modernization process may be thwarted in counterproductive ways. Chang and Holt discuss the dilemma facing Taiwan: Forcing a culture into the straitjacket of a defined ‘past’ serves to fix cultural Others in a ‘timeless present,’ confining them to a place that cannot change, or cannot change as easily as the representer’s culture. This may prevent Taiwan (in the eyes of Western tourists, at least) from achieving full modernization as long as it continues to respond to the West’s demand for traditionality and authenticity – two conceptions that usually conflict only when the tourist transaction brings them forcibly together. (1991: 116)

This dilemma is not limited to Asian or European countries. Rowe (1993), for example, points to the Australian travel industry’s juxtaposition of a nostalgia for nature (‘the bush’) and the past against modern urban life (‘the city’) – a construction that does not work smoothly. Comparing it with British travel images, he concludes: ‘[W]hereas Britain is romanticizing its past as civilization, Australia is marketing the timelessness of nature. This is ironic for a nation allegedly seeking to modernize itself’ (1993: 264). This irony is intensified, as Rowe points out, by the fact that tourism always brings about major changes in infrastructure and therefore threatens the very existence of undisturbed nature.

The entire process of nationalism and its discursive construction provides an important site for studying travel journalism. At the level of production and textualization, the questions are numerous. Where does travel journalism fit into agendas of nationalist construction and reconstruction both historically and in contemporary times? And how do formal institutions (such as state and national government, travel agencies) construct the boundaries and characteristics of nations? How do travel services (agencies, newspaper sections, television shows, public relations) articulate those concerns? Whose vision of nation is being served by each of these institutions? How do the texts of travel literature and travel journalism in developing nations reconcile the paradoxes between modernization, authenticity and change? At the level of reception analysis one can look at how the vision of the nation and its discursive ‘destinations’ in travel journalism direct actual tourists. How do tourists experience the national gazing at monuments (such as the Vietnam Memorial or India Gate)? How do hosts in mass tourist locations (such as Hawaii and the Caribbean) sustain earlier (or develop new) authenticities as they become ‘tourist-nations’?

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Power and identity Studies of international communication and culture have emphasized issues of power through two main approaches – cultural and media imperialism on the one hand and ideology and identity formation on the other. Both these approaches are useful for understanding tourism and travel journalism in its cross-cultural context.

Cultural imperialism C.M. Hall (1994) has suggested that the tourism research in marketing and economics, with its ‘value-free’ approach to science, has failed to consider the political context of tourism. He contends, ‘tourism is a central element of some of the critical economic and political issues of the contemporary era: the internationalization of capital; industrial and regional restructuring; urban redevelopment; and the growth of the service economy’ (1994: 197).

Hall questions the naive approach of seeing tourism as a ‘force of peace’ and a non-polluting industry that many policy makers try to promote.

Instead, theorists working from a dependency framework have argued that tourism performs economic functions for the rich tourist-generating super powers . . . it reinforces rather than undermines the structures of dependency and underdevelopment upon which the world system exists. Active encouragement of tourism by developing countries has led to an enmeshment in a global system over which they have little control.

(Britton, 1982: 331)

And, as Bryden (1973) shows in an economic analysis of Caribbean economies, it often does not produce the expected dividends. Hence, ‘tourism is only another manifestation of the existing economic and political [inequalities]’ (Geshekter, 1978: 57).

However, while a tremendous transfer of money, labor and goods occurs in the largest industry in the world, its impact goes well beyond monetary implications. As MacCannell (1976: 162) writes: ‘[N]ot only our old favorite, “the profit motive,” operates unambiguously in the development of [tourist] attractions. Some attractions are developed and maintained at great expense, though there are no economic returns.’ MacCannell’s work suggests that tourism should not be reduced solely to a form of economic and political dependency but that it should also be considered with regard to its cultural/ideological aspects. Thus, tourism becomes a form of cultural domination constructed by western countries – that is, tourism as a new form of imperialism (for example, Nash, 1989). Travel journalism in turn can be seen as a form of cultural imperialism that perpetuates what Shome calls ‘discursive imperialism’: [I]n the present times, discourses have become the prime means of imperialism. Whereas in the past, imperialism was about controlling the ‘native’ by

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colonizing her/him territorially, now imperialism is more about subjugating the ‘native’ by colonizing her/him discursively. (1996: 42)

A similar vision for understanding the representational practices of travel journalism also underlies the work of Pratt, who has studied 19th-century travel writing. She asks: How has travel writing produced ‘the rest of the world’ for European readerships at particular points in Europe’s expansionist trajectory? How do such signifying practices encode and legitimate the aspirations of economic expansion and empire? How do they betray them? (1992: 5)

We can extend Pratt’s questions to contemporary travel journalism. At the level of textual analysis, one can ask what are the dominant modes of representation in western travel writing? What is the range of these frames and what are the discursive categories that they draw on? Who benefits from such frames and who does not? Do certain kinds of tourism present different modes of representation or is a cultural homology evident in their representation? What are the changes that take place in travel representations with changing geo-political interests of western nation-states? Can travel journalism be seen as an ongoing expression of cultural transgression and reinvention that reflects the current inequalities between the First and Third worlds? At the level of reception, however, any theorizing of tourism as onesided dominating ideological transfer overlooks the complexity of this cultural practice. The idea of complexity derives from Foucault’s notion of discourse. As he puts it, discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can exist different or even contradictory discourses within the same strategy. . . . [Power is] a multiple and mobile field of force relations wherein far-reaching, but never completely stable, effects of domination are produced. (1980: 100)

Spivak draws on this notion of discourse and argues that postcolonial power is incorrectly defined in a static binary opposition of colonizer and colonized. This typology does not explain the ‘heterogeneity of “colonial power” and . . . disclose the complicity of the two poles of that opposition’ (quoted in Parry, 1987: 29). Understanding processes of cultural colonization, then, is not limited to the constitutive powers of colonizers over the colonized (by the articulation and rearticulation of culture), but expands to processes of culture and colonization that are diversely structured, localized and articulated within and across groups in the relationship.

Pratt applies these themes to travel writing. She develops two concepts (‘contact zone’ and ‘transculturation’) useful for our purposes. ‘Contact zones’ refer to the space of colonial encounters . . . a ‘contact’ perspective emphasizes how subjects are

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constituted in and by their relations to each other. It treats the relations among colonizers and colonized, or travelers and ‘travelees’, not in terms of separateness or apartheid, but in terms of co-presence, interaction, interlocking understandings and practices, often within radically asymmetrical relations of power. (1992: 7)

With the term ‘transculturation’ Pratt highlights the general process of cultural mediation of this relationship and, specifically, the cultural texts produced by such encounters. These texts are not only the Eurocentric text of the western (or First World) travel writer, but equally the texts of the Third World (or historically of the colonized). She asks: How are metropolitan modes of representation received and appropriated by the periphery? How has Europe’s construction of subordinated others been shaped by those others? By the constructions of themselves and their habitats that they presented to the Europeans? In what terms do colonized subjects represent themselves in ways that engage with (and resist) the colonizers’ own terms? (1992: 5)

Transforming these questions to the level of reception, we must identify the different strategies that Third World citizens bring to First World texts about the Third World. In other words, to study how the images of a western ‘other’ are incorporated by the ‘others’ themselves. We need to also investigate what is the range of travel journalism texts produced in the Third World? What are the indigenous models for framing travel? What are the kinds of oppositional strategies for constructing travel destinations that do not adhere to the discursive strategies of western texts? How is domestic tourism different from international tourism? How have indigenous traditions for travel transmuted into more modern forms of travel? Finally, we need to recognize that tourism is not a one-way flow from the First to the Third World. A growing number of the middle class (not just elites) travel to the First World as tourists, students and workers. The question is how these new tourism constituencies and their associated journalism construct travel experience.

Ideology and identity formation Issues of ideology and identity formation and maintenance have been at the forefront of cultural studies and have relevance for the study of tourism and travel journalism. Generally speaking, ideology formation from a cultural studies perspective is seen as a symbolic process. Like metaphors for language, ideologies are indispensable for the construction of meaning. They provide a framework for action and for understanding complex and incomprehensible realities – in the case of tourism the contact with the ‘Other’.

Like a road map, ideologies provide a model of reality and a model for

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reality at the same time (Geertz, 1973). Therefore, the analysis of the ideological dimension of tourism must involve all aspects of symbolic processes.

From such a perspective, travel journalism must be considered a key site of ideological formation, one that functions through contrasting practices. As Urry, for example, writes: [T]he gaze in any historical period is constructed in relationship to its opposite, to non-tourist forms of social experience and consciousness. What makes a particular tourist gaze depends upon what it is contrasted with; what the forms of non-tourist experience happen to be. . . . By considering the typical objects of the tourist gaze one can use these to make sense of elements of the wider society with which they are contrasted. (1990: 1–2)

Contrasting travel journalists’ constructs with underlying assumptions of the opposite allows for an understanding of what is taken for granted.

Recent debates in the field of cultural anthropology illuminate this point.

Chang and Holt explain how closely connected the experiences of ethnographers and tourists are: Just as the culture is selectively manifested to the ethnographer, so is it selectively manifested to the tourist. Both ethnographers and tourists engage in cultural inscriptions (not descriptions) that lead them to fixate the host culture in a certain way. (1991: 103; emphasis in original)

These ideas provide an importing starting point for evaluating travel journalism. At the level of encoding we can ask, what ideological work do travel journalists perform? It seems that travel journalists, even more than ‘average’ tourists, are trying to fix the ‘Other’. Their professional purpose is to come up with a narrative, a well-told story about other cultures, the past or distant places – in short, to package culture. This places travel journalists in a liminoid situation in society. They operate at the border between the foreign and the familiar. This situation makes their discourse especially charged. Studies of travel journalism need to consider the complexity of how this narrative is created. Moreover, at a time when globalizing trends in business and media have resulted in a ‘global identity crisis’ (Morley and Robins, 1995: 10), this situation ‘on the border’ puts travel journalists in the critical position of cultural translators, trying to define identity. The process of defining identity takes place across many sites. As Rowe explains: National, racial-ethnic as well as metaphysical mythologies are constructed and selectively mobilized in the act of consumer persuasion. These images are not, therefore, mere inventions or devices, nor can their ramifications be limited to the tourist cash nexus. They form part of the ensemble of cultural, economic, social and political relations in play in the constitution of society.

(1993: 261)

Travel journalism, much like tourism, is a multifaceted cultural practice

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with many players involved: government, private travel industry, travel writers/journalists, tourists, public relations agencies and advertising firms.

Research needs to address how these agencies – all with different and even contradictory interests – collectively shape an image of the ‘Other’. It needs to be examined at what level all these versions of reality are connected.

Numerous reception issues can be addressed: What kinds of ‘identity work’ do cultural industries (such as the travel industry) perform for audiences?

To what extent do the texts of travel journalism construct common boundaries of cultural and identity formation across social categories such as class, race and gender? Given that travel journalism is about selling destinations and cultures, are ‘positive’ identities replacing ‘negative’ images of the ‘Other’?

Experience and phenomenology A third body of research in sociology, anthropology and cultural studies has examined the specific experiences and dynamics of tourist and host interactions and formulated typologies of tourists/tourism and tourist experiences. Smith (1989), for example, divides tourism into five varieties (ethnic, cultural, historical, environmental and recreational) and Cohen (1973) provided a typology of four tourist roles – the organized mass tourist, the individual mass tourist, the explorer and the drifter. The first two were categories of institutionalized tourist roles that prefigure greater social distance between tourists and natives, and the last two are non-institutionalized roles and reflect meaningful cross-cultural interaction. Cohen (1979) also distinguishes between five modes of tourist experiences. Based on a phenomenological classification of tourist motivations, he distinguishes between recreational, diversionary, experimental, experiential and existential modes.

Other researchers in this tradition include Boorstein, with his early classification of tourism as a ‘frivolous activity’ (Cohen, 1979: 184) and of the tourist thriving on ‘pseudo-events’ and not authentic experiences. In a similar vein, MacCannell (1976: 1), drawing on the work of Durkheim and Goffman, examines tourism as a form of ‘staged authenticity’ and ‘touristic spaces’. Tourism, MacCannell argues (as opposed to Boorstein), is a modern form of the essentially religious quest for authenticity, but tourists are often robbed of that experience. The hosts create ‘tourist spaces’ in which spurious attractions are presented as if they were ‘real’. In other words, purveyors of culture ‘stage authenticity’ for tourist consumption.

The hosts create tourist spaces when tourists encroach on the ‘back’ regions of the culture. Such staging of roles is especially evident with mass tourism, where tourists become dehumanized objects to be tolerated for economic gain (Pi-Sunyer, 1977) and subject to excessive familiarity or hostility because of a failure to understand social roles within respective cultures (Smith, 1989).

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In contemporary times, tourists themselves tend to distance themselves from ‘tourism’. MacCannell calls this the dilemma of anti-tourism versus pro-tourism, and suggests that: The modern critique of the tourist is not an analytical reflection on the problem of tourism – it is part of the problem. Tourists are not criticized . . . for leaving home to see sights. They are reproached for being satisfied with superficial experiences of other people and places. . . . [T]ouristic shame is not based on being a tourist but on not being tourist enough, on a failure to see everything the way it ‘ought’ to be seen. (1976: 10)

Instead of successfully challenging the shortcomings of mass tourism, anti-tourists present a reified version of ‘modern’ tourism as unachievable model. One group of anti-tourists that has not given up on travelling but contests the standards of traditional mass tourism is introduced by Corrigan (1997), who called them untourists after an Australian travel network established in the early 1990s. These untourists are analogous to ‘eco tourists, green tourists, cultural tourists, alternative tourists, educational tourists’ (according to an activist quoted in Corrigan, 1997: 144). These tourists often travel with an environmental mission as reaction to the problem of mass tourism. They are still searching for authenticity (beyond the impossibilities of the postmodern age) but it is an elite construct of authenticity high on cultural capital and distinctively class defining. Quite a few untourists deliberately reject luxury at their vacation places after spending a large amount of money to reach the location in the first place (for example, a wilderness trek on the Amazon). ‘They reject “luxury” for what is presumably a more sophisticated way’, explains Corrigan (1997: 145).

Tomaselli adds a semiotic perspective to the problematic of tourism to indigenous people in Africa (by western tourists, filmmakers or anthropologists). He uses the term cultural tourism to distinguish this form of tourism as the ‘commodification of difference’ (Tomaselli, forthcoming). In several case studies, Tomaselli shows the symbolic work of western tourists, tour guides and native populations in Africa while creating the tourist experience. Often locals actively ‘reinvent their authenticity’ (1999: 188) to create a tourist experience. All parties together seem to develop agreed on representations of the tribes that are accepted by the tourists as authentic experience but often have nothing to do with the actual more westernized lives of these tribes. Certain moments in Tomaselli’s case studies even hint at more postmodern forms of tourism similar to what Feifer (1985) elucidates. Post-tourists, according to Feifer, actively play with the inauthenticity of the modern tourist experience. They ‘know that there is no authentic tourist experience, that there are merely a series of games or text that can be played’ (quoted in Urry, 1990: 11). Corrigan evaluates the different new types of tourism from the perspective of class and Bourdieu’s cultural capital, and anticipates:

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It seems likely that post-tourists and untourists will be the elite tourist categories of the future, the former representing the postmodern strand of culture . . . and the latter growing out of the environmental strand. Ironic players with appearance and earnest seekers after ‘authentic’ reality: the two poles of philosophical approaches to the world hardly ever seem to change.

Perhaps the ‘traveller’ is an uncertain mixture of both, while mass tourism will continue to serve those with lower levels of various types of capital.

(1997: 145–6)

Rojek reaches a step further and argues that the ‘quest for authenticity is a declining force in tourist motivation’ (1997: 71). Instead, he says that tourists actively create meaningful experiences in processes of symbolic ‘indexing and dragging’. In a media-saturated world, being a traveler and mobility become a standard state of mind – no longer a distinction from everyday life. As the media make everything seem familiar, difference needs to be culturally and artificially created: ‘[D]rift, as opposed to division, is a more appropriate characterization of tourist attitudes and practices’ (1997: 71; emphasis in original).

The research questions linking travel journalism to issues of phenomenology and experience could consider questions of how travel journalists construct tourist experience. What concept of ideal tour and preferred traveler are created? How is their travelling different from that of the tourist? In what terms does their engagement with the hosts construct their understanding of tourism? In which forms of tourism do most travel journalists engage (based on Cohen, Smith, Corrigan or Feifer’s typologies)? At the level of reception, one can study the specific dynamics between travel journalism and tourist institutions. This would entail examining the range of ‘cultural brokers’ that mediate tourism sites (such as priests at pilgrimage sites).

Joseph (1994), for example, found that local hosts in an Indian tourist town knew all the major travel writers and actively cultivated them, thereby actively structuring the tourist experience. Another branch of research should investigate what concepts of authenticity are manifested in travel journalism. Is there a trend towards presenting post-tourism and the postmodern state of mind of ‘traveling’ in accounts that reflect the contemporary travel situation?

Beyond travel as cultural metaphor During the past decade, metaphors of travel have become popular as a vocabulary for cultural theorists to analyze methodological and epistemological issues of cultural analysis. One of the seminal contributions is Clifford’s article ‘Traveling Cultures’ (1992) in which he questions the dichotomy between dwelling and traveling. Several theorists argue that cultural analysis

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that invokes the position of the traveler can better reflect the hybridization of culture and challenge the traditionally privileged position of researchers. They urge scholars to see culture as an anti-essentialist and fluid category. Thus, the position of ‘subjects’ as well as of researchers should be constructed in the new position of unsettled normads (for example, Grossberg, 1988; Morris, 1988; Said, 1993). Wolff (1993) criticized this theorizing as a gendered discourse based in a vocabulary that privileges male travel experiences. She argues ‘that the use of that vocabulary as metaphor necessarily produces androcentric tendencies in theory’ (1993: 224). Loshitzky (1996) problematizes travel metaphors in cultural analysis as overly celebratory stylistic elements that often ignore actual power inequalities. As an example, she shows how the cultural impact of global television is shaped by postmodern ‘traveling’ moments but also by actual colonizing forces.

We add to this criticism that cultural theory has to go beyond using oftenromanticized notions of travel as metaphors and engage with actual travel practices. To briefly summarize, our aims here have been primarily programmatic – to map a theoretical framework (from a cultural studies perspective) for studying travel journalism. To that end, we have reviewed cross-disciplinary sets of literatures in cultural studies, sociology and anthropology and made connections from that literature to specific questions for mass communication research. Especially postcolonial studies (for example, Pratt, 1992) and sociology (for example, Urry, 1990, 1995; Rojek and Urry, 1997) have begun to embrace travel and tourism as topics for academic inquiry. We argue that it is time for communication scholars to follow suit and interrogate contemporary practices of travel journalism. The analyses of travel journalism we have suggested should not focus narrowly on any one aspect of this global discourse but equal attention should be paid to both the encoding and decoding dimensions. This research places travel journalism in the broader context of international communication and media globalization. We see it as an institutional site where meaning is created and where a collective version of the ‘Other/We’ is negotiated, contested and constantly redefined. By calling attention to and theorizing this under-studied genre, we hope to encourage media scholars to begin the empirical analysis of travel journalism globally.

Note 1 We understand that there is a blurring of boundaries between travel journalism and travel writing. It is not unusual for travel journalists to move from print journalism (newspapers and magazines) to publishing books. Notable contemporary examples are Pico Iyer (2000), Paul Theroux (1985), or P.J. O’Rourke (1988). Overall, we don’t find it necessary to establish extremely exclusive categories when defining our area of study. But in general, travel

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writing in our category comprises non-fictional accounts echoing Hartley’s (1996) imperative that journalism ‘counts as true’.

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● ELFRIEDE FÜRSICH is an assistant professor of communication at Boston College, USA. Her scholarly interests include journalism, media globalization and cultural studies. Address: Boston College, Communication Department, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, ● MA 02467, USA. [email: fursich@bc.edu]

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● ANANDAM P. KAVOORI is an associate professor at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, Athens, USA. His research explores international news construction and transnational cultural studies. Address: University of Georgia, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, Athens, ● GA 30602, USA. [email: akavoori@arches.uga.edu]

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